Two Weeks Notice(ing)

Photo by Liana Mikah on Unsplash

Two weeks ago I made a drastic career shift. I left my 6ft x 6ft cubicle at a fancy engineering firm where I worked 12+ hours a day and traded it in for making lattes and cold foam, here’s what I noticed.

At my old job, I struggled to get to sleep each night, dreading my 4:30 am alarm. I did all the performative routines to get myself ready for the day, though I was in a constant state of exhaustion and constipation. Everyday blended together because I left my house in the dark wee hours and rushed home in the bumper to bumper ones to scrape together some semblance of “life” after my 12+ hour day of looking at a screen.

While in my cage, I mean, cubicle, I pressed buttons on a keyboard and did emails and meetings, sometimes I did just meetings all day, sometimes just emails. My job was to make sure everyone else did their job. So you can imagine how fulfilling that was.

Now though, my feet ache (though that is starting to regulate) and my workday is surprisingly fewer hours. I leave the house at 6:45am so I can brew a cup of coffee for myself and ease into opening the cafe by 7:30am (did I mention my commute is 35 minutes less now too?), while the milk steams, I am planning out new flavor combinations and watching latte art tutorials. All this new form creativity has been a lot of fun to absorb.

The weekend away from work though, wow, I think that’s the most shocking change. Before being a barista, I would stress out on Sunday mid morning and spiral into that clammy space of professional dread. I thought longingly about ‘having more time’ and dreamed about having my brain to myself and not wasting my thinking on a day that hadn’t even started yet.

Now, my hands get dirty from the garden or the studio. My feeling of tired comes from doing real, actual work and the weekend feels like a restful pause between weeks. I do my job, I make the coffee and serve it, then it’s done. The weekend time is now my own and my brain is pulsing with lots of creative ideas and schemes that I cannot wait to dive into.

Leaving my corporate life for this more grounded version of self has been absolutely amazing and I feel like all of the frustrations, frazzles, burnt out vibes I was embracing before wasn’t ‘getting older’ or ‘perimenopause’ it was that I worked a fake job doing work that really didn’t feed me and now, the work I do soothes me. I get the best version of everyone I interact with. I get to be around coffee and smell like vanilla and caramel on my way home from work. I get to use my arms and legs and work my muscles doing a blue collar job that makes be feel like a best friend, a therapist, a help line, a philosopher, an artist… you get the idea. I get to make a cup of joy for everyone that comes to my counter and they leave me smiling. I love that. I absolutely frickin’ love that!

I guess I am writing all of this to say, if you think that working in service or a trade is something that you are interested in, do it!

Leave that cubicle and join me!